Um, yes you will. Go test some soil, if you're so inclined. B12-producing bacteria is found in varying amounts in the soil from many different places. It's not that it's been wiped out, it's that the levels have been decreased to the point where it can no longer be relied on as an adequate dietary source. On top of that, the treatment of many fruits and vegetables (the spraying and coating that goes on, before and after harvesting) affects it too.
There are some researchers that argue that the levels still available in fruit & veg that are organically farmed, and not commercially washed, might be sufficient to support a healthy diet. But personally I've never been convinced enough by that argument to rely on it. Multivitamin supplements have always seemed like a pretty good idea to me anyway, so I just do that from time to time to make sure I'm covered.
Interestingly, B12 *used* to be available in plant-based foods. While it's never synthesized by plants, as you say, it's commonly thought that the abundance of bacteria in the soil meant that, in the past, people who ate only plant foods would still end up with a sufficient intake of B12 from that.
Over the years, the pesticides and such that we use in farming have stripped the soils of these bacteria (among other things), which is why B12 supplements of some form have become pretty much a necessity for anybody (like myself) who tries to avoid all animal products.
It's easier & cheaper than you might think to get hold of fake license plates. I once had to buy a new one to replace one that got broken, and all I did was go into a local mechanic's where they made them, and told them what number I wanted on it. They didn't need any sort of proof or identification.
At least that's how it was in the UK. I'm not sure about the US cos over here they all seem to come from the DPS types of places.
Easy. Because I need the information NOW. Because I want the physical copy that I can grab off a shelf any time I need it. Because there will always be a newer version coming out, and if I really need the book, I have to get it eventually.
Agrred. I think I worded it a bit badly in the submission. Bah. What I meant was, whenever you do choose to buy a book, it would be nice to be getting the most up to date revision at that point, rather than the last major release (which might have been a long time ago).
Perhaps it's just a case of trying to decide where to draw the line. If you consider people who suffer from severe forms of autism who may be unable to look after themselves, or folks with depression intense enough that they harm themselves or others, then I think it's fair to say that those traits constitute "having something wrong with you".
A.S. obviously isn't an extreme problem like that, but should we consider it to have a similar nature, or does it have more in common with, say, wishing one could have a better sense of humor or be better at sports in order to be more popular?
I personally think it's more of the former than the latter, but I can also see that you could certainly argue both sides.
Well, surely any disorder is legitimate to the degree that it causes problems for people? I think it *is* subjective and qualitative, but that's mostly because it's hard to categorise these types of things.
I'd like to think there's more point to it than heuristics though. It's an effort to understand what's normal and what isn't, and what can be helped and what can't.
I find it hard to believe a psychiatrist would basically say "it's up to you whether or not you have a mental illness"
Asperger's Syndrome isn't an illness, that's why. It's a disorder, which is quite a different thing. It's not something that causes you danger, nor something that can be treated medically.
To a large degree, wether you "have it" is defined by whether it creates problems for you in your life, because the behavioural difficulties are atually part of the definition of the disorder.
A.S. isn't something that a medical professional can really "test" you for. At least not in any really objective way. Diagnosis is based on identifying which, if any, of a set of particular traits you have. And many of them are quite hard to guage in people you don't know. (Admittedly some are easy to spot; it's a mixed bag).
Because of this, diagnosis of things like "does patient find it difficult to adapt to changes in routine" might well be done with a doctor asking you "so, do you find it difficult to adapt to changes in routine?" **. And some things are, by nature, invisible to other pople, e.g. do you find it natural to make eye contact when talking, or have you learned to fake it?
Since none of the diagnostic criteria are particularly hard to understand, an alternative (or complimentary) approach would be to gather this information yourself. It's hard not to be biased in these things, but you can call on the opinions of family members, friends, trusted work collegues, and the like, and do a pretty good job of assessing yourself that way. You can use the same criteria your doc would (summary here).
I'm not trying to argue against professional diagnosis. But you're likely to end up trading off between the opinion of somebody who probably knows more about the symptoms, vs the opinions of folks who probably know more about you.
Cheers,
Kevin
** Yeah, I'm exageratting a bit. But not a whole lot, IMHO. Not all that many doctors are very experienced with Asperger's anyyway
The ActiveRecord classes in Rails make use of these sorts of things quite a lot. For example:
class Firm < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many:clients
has_one:account
belongs_to:conglomorate
before_destroy { |record| Client.destroy_all "client_of = #{record.id}" } end
The before_destroy is a callback used to implement triggers in the code, similar to how they'd work in the DB. Shown here using a block but you can also just have regular method calls.
Although it doesn't use blocks, I think the very declarative-looking use of has_many etc is quite nice too.
I convinced the brass to go GTK# all the way, and to stick to features in the CLR.
Yup, I'm with you there. It's actually a pretty fast way to develop (IMHO), and one that avoids any nasty tie-ins to the OS.
I only mentioned Win32 because I was trying to guess what it was this guy felt he couldn't do.
There's a few of them about though...we once had a guy quit in disgust when we moved from SourceSafe to CVS. I really couldn't fathom that one at all...
I have always written software for windows, but never with Microsoft tools. I don't feel like I have enough control over the product when I use Microsoft programming environments.
Seems like a bit of a contradiction. However, what is it about C# that makes you feel like you have less control over the product?
After all, you can get to all of the Win32 API, call native code, basically do whatever you want. And if it's the development environment you're worried about, just use the command lines tools with make or NAnt or whatever you prefer -- there's no reliance on Visual Studio or any of that sort of stuff. There are some pretty good C# emacs major modes, too.
Clearly it's a bit too late to be pointing stuff like that out. But I'd be interested to know what your reasons were for the "enough control over the product" statement.
I didn't say it couldn't; we were talking about external devices.
Some folks seem concerned that the price of the mini rises too much if you kit it out with a lot of options. And that if you don't add the options now, then you can't really upgrade later. Making stuff like external superdrives that you can buy sometime down the line, if and when you need one, might help.
I think it would be cool if they released some external FW drives using the same form factor (perhaps a bit less tall). Then you could sit them under the mini, kind of like the external HDs for the old Mac Plus, if anybody remembers those.
In addition to a large capacity (and faster) HD, they could also do a DVD burner and have iDVD support it natively.
You are talking about "Blink Broadband" right? (That's the part that they claim is "optimized for IE"). It certainly doesn't work in Firefox when I try it.
In IE, I get a list of search categories on the left, which gradually turn red as they get populated. Hovering over one updates the results panel on the right.
In Firefox, only the top category seems to get populated. Hovering over the other categories does sod all.
And sections like "news" and "visualizer" are just disabled.
Well, they do have "blinkx Broadband requires Microsoft Internet Explorer(TM) 6.0 or above" written in a wee font right above where it says "Optimized for IE & Broadband Users".
Perhaps they were too lazy to try it in anything else.
>Second, Linux initiatives have enabled foreign-based information >technology firms with zero IP costs and cheap labor to easily compete with U.S. >software companies
Isn't he forgetting that these "zero IP costs" are effectively being imported to the US too?
A lot of free software originates from outside the US, <cough>Linux</cough>, and its existance surely provides many technological benefits to US companies.
The idea that all the smart work is done by Americans and then gobbled up by a punch of pesky foreigners (which I feel was being alluded to) is ridiculous.
I totally agree. I was recently "peer diagnosed" as having A.S. by a co-worker who has it. I never tried to get a professional diagnosis, but I started to read a lot about it and found almost all of the symptoms are things that I do. (Some of it was quite startling -- reading other peoples' accounts of things that I'd always thought were just me being dorky/shy/geeky etc, and realizing there are lots of folk who are the same way).
Point is, for a lot of us geeky types, normal social interaction *is* often quite forced. Learning how to act like you have social skills is not the same thing as learning social skills. (For folks with A.S., it's pretty much always a conscious effort).
There are also lots of little things you can learn to do that can help. For example, many "regular" people will react oddly to you if you don't maintain eye contact when talking to them (they may not always be aware they're doing it, mind you). If, like me, you find eye contact really uncomfortable, just look at the top of the person's nose, instead of looking away. To them, it looks just proper eye contact. It might sound silly, but little things like that can make a big difference.
why not spend you high budgets with an educational compaign to stop people from buying spammed products? No money made means no motivation
I liked that idea too, but unfortunately I don't think it can work in practice. The percentage of people who respond to spam is already very very tiny -- the problem is it's so cheap (i.e. basically free) to spam huge numbers of people, so even such a tiny response rate can generate a decent revenue. No educational campaign is going to be effective enough to prevent *everyone* from responding; there's always a few gullible souls left who'll take the bait.
We voted with our dollars on banner ads and look how that market fell out
That was different though, because there was someone to take it out on. If I get sick enough of the banners on your site, I'll stop visiting it. You lose. If I get sick of your spam I can....well....ignore it, which doesn't hurt you at all.
cheers.
It does offer some solutions and advice to those, although I'd have liked to see more of the book devoted to it. I think most folk can easily see the benefits of unit testing when shown simple examples (like writing tests for a linked list or a temperature converter or something), but it takes a fair bit more effort to learn how to apply tests to "real world" code.
From what I've learned so far, there are 2 main things that'll help you write unit tests for these sorts of situations: one is to mercilessly refactor your code as you go, and soon you'll probably find it naturally becomes easier to test. Seperate any database code from the application logic, for example, and you'll probably find that the application logic becomes pretty easy to test.
The second thing is mock objects. The typical example of these is (again) database code. By making a little mock implementation that only *looks* like it's really writing to a database you can often then test other parts of your code without having the hassle of setting up sample data, cleaning it back out afterwards and so on. In web apps, you may find it handy to have a mock implementation that pulls page requests, effectively pretending to be the browser.
One other thing, which sounds a bit smug but is actually very true: if you start out writing tests from the beginning of a project, it will probably remain easy to test. On the other hand, if you take an existing codebase and try to retrofit tests onto it, it's more than likely that you'll have to rearrange a lot of code in the process...
Cheers.
Slashdot Mirror
Because it used the Gmail SMTP server to send it out, which requires authentication.
You won't find your missing B12 there
Um, yes you will. Go test some soil, if you're so inclined. B12-producing bacteria is found in varying amounts in the soil from many different places. It's not that it's been wiped out, it's that the levels have been decreased to the point where it can no longer be relied on as an adequate dietary source. On top of that, the treatment of many fruits and vegetables (the spraying and coating that goes on, before and after harvesting) affects it too. There are some researchers that argue that the levels still available in fruit & veg that are organically farmed, and not commercially washed, might be sufficient to support a healthy diet. But personally I've never been convinced enough by that argument to rely on it. Multivitamin supplements have always seemed like a pretty good idea to me anyway, so I just do that from time to time to make sure I'm covered.
Interestingly, B12 *used* to be available in plant-based foods. While it's never synthesized by plants, as you say, it's commonly thought that the abundance of bacteria in the soil meant that, in the past, people who ate only plant foods would still end up with a sufficient intake of B12 from that.
Over the years, the pesticides and such that we use in farming have stripped the soils of these bacteria (among other things), which is why B12 supplements of some form have become pretty much a necessity for anybody (like myself) who tries to avoid all animal products.
It's easier & cheaper than you might think to get hold of fake license plates. I once had to buy a new one to replace one that got broken, and all I did was go into a local mechanic's where they made them, and told them what number I wanted on it. They didn't need any sort of proof or identification.
At least that's how it was in the UK. I'm not sure about the US cos over here they all seem to come from the DPS types of places.
Agrred. I think I worded it a bit badly in the submission. Bah. What I meant was, whenever you do choose to buy a book, it would be nice to be getting the most up to date revision at that point, rather than the last major release (which might have been a long time ago).
Cheers,
Kevin
Perhaps it's just a case of trying to decide where to draw the line. If you consider people who suffer from severe forms of autism who may be unable to look after themselves, or folks with depression intense enough that they harm themselves or others, then I think it's fair to say that those traits constitute "having something wrong with you".
A.S. obviously isn't an extreme problem like that, but should we consider it to have a similar nature, or does it have more in common with, say, wishing one could have a better sense of humor or be better at sports in order to be more popular?
I personally think it's more of the former than the latter, but I can also see that you could certainly argue both sides.
Cheers, Kevin
Well, surely any disorder is legitimate to the degree that it causes problems for people? I think it *is* subjective and qualitative, but that's mostly because it's hard to categorise these types of things.
I'd like to think there's more point to it than heuristics though. It's an effort to understand what's normal and what isn't, and what can be helped and what can't.
Asperger's Syndrome isn't an illness, that's why. It's a disorder, which is quite a different thing. It's not something that causes you danger, nor something that can be treated medically.
To a large degree, wether you "have it" is defined by whether it creates problems for you in your life, because the behavioural difficulties are atually part of the definition of the disorder.
A.S. isn't something that a medical professional can really "test" you for. At least not in any really objective way. Diagnosis is based on identifying which, if any, of a set of particular traits you have. And many of them are quite hard to guage in people you don't know. (Admittedly some are easy to spot; it's a mixed bag).
Because of this, diagnosis of things like "does patient find it difficult to adapt to changes in routine" might well be done with a doctor asking you "so, do you find it difficult to adapt to changes in routine?" **. And some things are, by nature, invisible to other pople, e.g. do you find it natural to make eye contact when talking, or have you learned to fake it?
Since none of the diagnostic criteria are particularly hard to understand, an alternative (or complimentary) approach would be to gather this information yourself. It's hard not to be biased in these things, but you can call on the opinions of family members, friends, trusted work collegues, and the like, and do a pretty good job of assessing yourself that way. You can use the same criteria your doc would (summary here).
I'm not trying to argue against professional diagnosis. But you're likely to end up trading off between the opinion of somebody who probably knows more about the symptoms, vs the opinions of folks who probably know more about you.
Cheers,
** Yeah, I'm exageratting a bit. But not a whole lot, IMHO. Not all that many doctors are very experienced with Asperger's anyywayKevin
The ActiveRecord classes in Rails make use of these sorts of things quite a lot. For example:
The before_destroy is a callback used to implement triggers in the code, similar to how they'd work in the DB. Shown here using a block but you can also just have regular method calls.
Although it doesn't use blocks, I think the very declarative-looking use of has_many etc is quite nice too.
Yup, I'm with you there. It's actually a pretty fast way to develop (IMHO), and one that avoids any nasty tie-ins to the OS.
I only mentioned Win32 because I was trying to guess what it was this guy felt he couldn't do.
There's a few of them about though...we once had a guy quit in disgust when we moved from SourceSafe to CVS. I really couldn't fathom that one at all...
Seems like a bit of a contradiction. However, what is it about C# that makes you feel like you have less control over the product?
After all, you can get to all of the Win32 API, call native code, basically do whatever you want. And if it's the development environment you're worried about, just use the command lines tools with make or NAnt or whatever you prefer -- there's no reliance on Visual Studio or any of that sort of stuff. There are some pretty good C# emacs major modes, too.
Clearly it's a bit too late to be pointing stuff like that out. But I'd be interested to know what your reasons were for the "enough control over the product" statement.
Cheers.I didn't say it couldn't; we were talking about external devices.
Some folks seem concerned that the price of the mini rises too much if you kit it out with a lot of options. And that if you don't add the options now, then you can't really upgrade later. Making stuff like external superdrives that you can buy sometime down the line, if and when you need one, might help.
But hey, thanks for being so pleasant about it.
I think it would be cool if they released some external FW drives using the same form factor (perhaps a bit less tall). Then you could sit them under the mini, kind of like the external HDs for the old Mac Plus, if anybody remembers those.
In addition to a large capacity (and faster) HD, they could also do a DVD burner and have iDVD support it natively.
You are talking about "Blink Broadband" right? (That's the part that they claim is "optimized for IE"). It certainly doesn't work in Firefox when I try it.
In IE, I get a list of search categories on the left, which gradually turn red as they get populated. Hovering over one updates the results panel on the right.
In Firefox, only the top category seems to get populated. Hovering over the other categories does sod all.
And sections like "news" and "visualizer" are just disabled.
Well, they do have "blinkx Broadband requires Microsoft Internet Explorer(TM) 6.0 or above" written in a wee font right above where it says "Optimized for IE & Broadband Users".
Perhaps they were too lazy to try it in anything else.
You gotta love the use of the term "optimized for", when waht they actually mean is "requires" :-)
Good call. I guess the author can't get over thinking "americans smart, foreigners dumb", despite being living proof of the contrary.
>Second, Linux initiatives have enabled foreign-based information
>technology firms with zero IP costs and cheap labor to easily compete with U.S.
>software companies
Isn't he forgetting that these "zero IP costs" are effectively being imported to the US too?
A lot of free software originates from outside the US, <cough>Linux</cough>, and its existance surely provides many technological benefits to US companies.
The idea that all the smart work is done by Americans and then gobbled up by a punch of pesky foreigners (which I feel was being alluded to) is ridiculous.
> I can't remember if it gives you a choice at instalation time
It does. You just need to enter "bf24" at the first prompt in the installer. Works like a charm.
Cheers.
Of course we need more programming languages. That is how we learn how to make programming languages better.
Sure, only a small number of languages become popular in the end. But that doesn't mean the unpopular ones don't have academic value.
Cheers.
I totally agree. I was recently "peer diagnosed" as having A.S. by a co-worker who has it. I never tried to get a professional diagnosis, but I started to read a lot about it and found almost all of the symptoms are things that I do. (Some of it was quite startling -- reading other peoples' accounts of things that I'd always thought were just me being dorky/shy/geeky etc, and realizing there are lots of folk who are the same way).
Point is, for a lot of us geeky types, normal social interaction *is* often quite forced. Learning how to act like you have social skills is not the same thing as learning social skills. (For folks with A.S., it's pretty much always a conscious effort).
There are also lots of little things you can learn to do that can help. For example, many "regular" people will react oddly to you if you don't maintain eye contact when talking to them (they may not always be aware they're doing it, mind you). If, like me, you find eye contact really uncomfortable, just look at the top of the person's nose, instead of looking away. To them, it looks just proper eye contact. It might sound silly, but little things like that can make a big difference.
Cheers.
why not spend you high budgets with an educational compaign to stop people from buying spammed products? No money made means no motivation
I liked that idea too, but unfortunately I don't think it can work in practice. The percentage of people who respond to spam is already very very tiny -- the problem is it's so cheap (i.e. basically free) to spam huge numbers of people, so even such a tiny response rate can generate a decent revenue. No educational campaign is going to be effective enough to prevent *everyone* from responding; there's always a few gullible souls left who'll take the bait.
We voted with our dollars on banner ads and look how that market fell out
That was different though, because there was someone to take it out on. If I get sick enough of the banners on your site, I'll stop visiting it. You lose. If I get sick of your spam I can....well....ignore it, which doesn't hurt you at all.
cheers.
It does offer some solutions and advice to those, although I'd have liked to see more of the book devoted to it. I think most folk can easily see the benefits of unit testing when shown simple examples (like writing tests for a linked list or a temperature converter or something), but it takes a fair bit more effort to learn how to apply tests to "real world" code.
From what I've learned so far, there are 2 main things that'll help you write unit tests for these sorts of situations: one is to mercilessly refactor your code as you go, and soon you'll probably find it naturally becomes easier to test. Seperate any database code from the application logic, for example, and you'll probably find that the application logic becomes pretty easy to test.
The second thing is mock objects. The typical example of these is (again) database code. By making a little mock implementation that only *looks* like it's really writing to a database you can often then test other parts of your code without having the hassle of setting up sample data, cleaning it back out afterwards and so on. In web apps, you may find it handy to have a mock implementation that pulls page requests, effectively pretending to be the browser.
One other thing, which sounds a bit smug but is actually very true: if you start out writing tests from the beginning of a project, it will probably remain easy to test. On the other hand, if you take an existing codebase and try to retrofit tests onto it, it's more than likely that you'll have to rearrange a lot of code in the process... Cheers.